Spring 2011 - Materials Science and Engineering - University of ...

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chair’sMESSAGE 2 ROBERT M. BRIBER We have a lot to be proud of! This year, two of our junior faculty, John Cumings and Joonil Seog, received NSF CAREER awards for their work in nanotechnology. Their accomplishments reflect the level of excellence in education and research ongoing in the Department, as well as the future of the field. Professor Ichiro Takeuchi became the latest member of the faculty to be elected a Fellow of a national scientific society, in this case the American Physical Society. Our students also continue to win awards, scholarships and fellowships. You can read about some of the most recent on pages 10-12. I’d like to let you know about a few other great things we didn’t have room to include in this issue: Professor Mohamad Al-Sheikhly was the Chair of the 9th meeting of the Ionizing Radiation and Polymers Symposium (IRaP 2010), hosted at the University and at which Professor Emeritus Joseph Silverman received a Lifetime Achievement award. The Department continues to strengthen its ties to NIST, with over $30 million in new funding to support two separate programs, one at the Center for Neutron Research (for which I serve as the PI) and one with the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (for which Professors John Cumings and Oded Rabin serve as co-PIs). Assistant Research Scientist Hui Wu received the Pittsburgh Diffraction Society’s 2010 Sidhu Award for her “outstanding expertise [in] neutron and x-ray diffraction to solve key structural problems which are central [to] the understanding and development of novel…porous framework materials for hydrogen storage.” Her work has resulted in over 40 publications in high-impact journals spanning disciplines including chemistry, materials science, and physics. Please encourage the potential future scientists and engineers you meet to think about materials science and engineering as a career. If they choose MSE, they will be at the center of some of the most exciting developments that we will see in the next decade. The future of engineering depends on the underlying materials that form the building blocks of our modern society. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, please consider visiting us to learn about the latest developments in research and education. If you are an alumnus or alumna, please keep us informed of the changes in your career by e-mailing us at mse@umd.edu. Robert M. Briber Professor and Chair, MSE NSF-CAREER Awards, continued from page 1 research will be conducted in the Nanoscale Imaging, Spectroscopy, and Properties Laboratory (NISPLab). Seog (joint, Fischell Department of Bioengineering) received his award for a proposal titled “Direct Observation of Dynamic Self-Assembly at the Single Molecule and Nanoscale Level,” which outlined the use of a novel technique to study the self-assembly behavior of peptides. Peptides—polymers made out of amino acids that are found in every cell—perform some of the most crucial biochemical and physiological functions required to sustain life. At the molecular level, Seog will use a combination of optical mini-tweezers and a novel single molecule construct to provide fundamental information about the behavior of two particular peptides, amyloid beta and tau, which self-assemble into a nanofiber that can be used as a platform to create bioinspired materials. At the nanoscale level, his group will use atomic force microscopy to examine the growth of the nanofibers, the optimal conditions for their creation, and the effects of nanomechanical forces on their properties and assembly. The research will be conducted in Seog’s Molecular Mechanics and Self-Assembly Laboratory. The implications of the work extend beyond Seog’s lab. “The experimental approaches we’ve developed are general and can be readily extended to answer questions about other self-assembling molecular systems,” he says. Seog’s award will also support several educational objectives inspired by his research, including the development of an atomic force microscopy model for blind students, new and existing biomaterials and nanomechanics courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as undergraduate research opportunities in his lab. Since joining the department in 2005, Cumings has twice been invited to present research on artificial spin ice at the American Physical Society’s March Meeting; developed a new form of microscopy used test nanoscale devices in real-time while they are observed in a transmission electron microscope; and was selected to lead the University of Maryland Energy Frontier Research Center’s nanowires team. Recently, he received a Department of Energy grant to study thermal resistance of carbon nanotubes. Seog, who joined the department in 2007, established the Molecular Mechanics Laboratory, home to one of the relatively few installations of optical mini-tweezers, which are used to study single molecules in nanomedicine and nanobiotechnology research. He is currently collaborating with MSE professor Gottlieb Oehrlein to characterize the effects of plasma on biological molecules at the monolayer level (see related story, p. 8). TECHTRACKS Spring 2011
facultyNEWS Takeuchi Elected APS Fellow Professor Ichiro Takeuchi was elected to Fellowship in the American Physical Society (APS). The Council of the APS cited Takeuchi “for pioneering contributions to the creation of novel classes of materials using combinatorial synthesis and probing their properties with novel probes.” Founded at Columbia University in 1899, the APS has 46,000 members and is the publisher of Physical Review Letters, the top physics journal in the nation. APS Fellows constitute no more than one half of one percent of the total membership. Takeuchi is one of the relatively few scientists worldwide who specializes in combinatorial materials science (also known as “combi”), which allows for the rapid screening of a large number of compositionally varying samples to determine if any have the characteristics the researchers desire, saving time and money in the process. Only a handful of facilities capable of this kind of work exist throughout the world, and the one Takeuchi manages, the Keck Laboratory for Combinatorial Nanosynthesis and Multiscale Characterization, is unique among American universities. One of Takeuchi’s highest-profile combi projects was the discovery of a new, lead-free piezoelectric material whose properties are comparable to PZT, a lead-based compound currently widely used in electronics. His other research interests include the fabrication and characterization of novel multilayer thin-film devices, development of scanning probe microscopes, thin-film deposition and characterization, device fabrication, and low temperature measurements. Takeuchi’s work has won him numerous grants and honors, including the ONR Young Investigator Program Award in 2000, the NSF-CAREER Award in 2001, and being selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s 2008 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. He was named a University Research Leader for his success in bringing millions of sponsored research dollars to campus, including its first Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency— Energy (ARPA-E) grant to develop a smart alloy that could make cooling systems up to 175% more efficient, and a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant that funds the exploration of new ways to construct highly-sensitive magnetometers. Takeuchi earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1996. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he returned to campus to join the MSE faculty in 1999. He has been a visiting professor at institutes, laboratories and universities in Germany and Japan (see p. 5), and has been a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology since 2002. Takeuchi is the fourth member of the MSE faculty, and the second in the past three years, to become an elected fellow of the APS, joining Professor and Chair Robert M. Briber, Associate Professor Luz Martínez- Miranda, and Maryland NanoCenter director Professor Gary Rubloff. 3 nsf-careerREASEARCH From Professor Joonil Seog’s Molecular Mechanics and Self- From Professor John Cumings and the Nanoscale Imaging, Assembly Laboratory: Stretching and relaxing a single biological Spectroscopy, and Properties Laboratory: Electron microscopy molecule using optical tweezers. The top bead is “tweezed” by shows the interaction of artificial magnetic atoms on an a laser light and the bottom bead is fixed onto a pipette tip. A experimentally-defined lattice: A) various configurations of biological molecule (e.g. DNA) is tethered between the two beads the interacting vertices, showing magnetic monopoles at the and can be repeatedly pulled and relaxed, revealing the mechanical intersections. B) Under the influence of a magnetic field, monopoles properties of the biomacromolecules at the single molecule level. move through the lattice, producing reversal patterns that will be This method can also provide very useful information about studied in the course of Cumings’ research project. dynamic properties of biomolecules, which can shed light on protein folding, self-assembly, and protein-protein interactions. Illustration by postdoctoral research associate Chenyang Tie. A. James Clark School of Engineering Glenn L. Martin Institute of Technology
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Spring 2011 - Materials Science and Engineering - University of ...

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